Anthropic and OpenAI now occupy the top two positions on DeFiLlama's newly expanded pre-IPO company tracker, underscoring how private capital has shifted toward artificial intelligence infrastructure and frontier model developers.
According to data published on August 27, 2026, DeFiLlama is tracking 182 pre-IPO companies. Anthropic leads with an estimated private valuation of $1.38 trillion after a 716.89% one-year increase, while OpenAI follows at approximately $900.29 billion, up 140.08% over the same period. Other fast-rising AI-related names include DeepSeek at $50 billion, Cognition at $35.2 billion after a 325.41% rise, Moonshot AI, Mistral AI, ElevenLabs, and data-infrastructure firm ClickHouse, which climbed nearly 3,000% year over year.
The rankings reflect a broader investment surge. Goldman Sachs Research projected on August 7 that global AI-related investment will reach about $1 trillion in 2026, including $581 billion in the United States. Stanford's 2026 AI Index found global private AI investment rose 127.5% in 2025 to $344.7 billion, with generative AI attracting $170.9 billion. Forge noted the $100 billion private valuation benchmark has become less rare: xAI reached it in 2.3 years, Anthropic in 4.5 years, and OpenAI in 8.3 years, compared with 17.1 years for Waymo and 19.6 years for SpaceX.
Separately, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, scheduled for October 13–15 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, will feature a dedicated AI Stage presented by Google for Startups. Anthropic's Cat de Jong and OpenAI's Tara Seshan are among confirmed speakers, alongside executives from Okta, Databricks, AWS, Luta Security, and 1Password. The agenda covers enterprise deployment of Claude, go-to-market engineering, AI-native business models, and agent security.
Meanwhile, public AI stocks have wobbled, with Nasdaq Private Market reporting in July that hyperscaler stocks fell 12% from a May 29 peak and AI chip names dropped 13% from a June 22 peak. Private markets remained more resilient: its tracker of the 50 largest private companies was up 62% year to date, versus 8% for the S&P 500. The upcoming IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI may become liquidity events rather than value-creation moments, with DeFiLlama estimating recent funding valuations at $965 billion and $852 billion respectively.
